Author: sparki

Climate Resistance in Bloom – March Update

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FU tar sandsClimate Resistance in Bloom – March Update

UPCOMING ACTIONS AND ACTION CAMPS

CONTENTS

Tar Sands Blockade Disrupts TransCanada Executive Gears up for Week of Action

An activist with Tar Sands Blockade locked his neck to a projector screen and successfully disrupted a TransCanada presentation at an oil industry gathering in Houston. In taking direct action, Ethan Nuss confronted in-person Paul Miller, TransCanada’s Executive Vice President of Oil Pipelines, and a ballroom of tar sands industry investors, demanding a halt to the toxic Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

For TransCanada “business as usual” means death and destruction for our communities. Find actions and events in your community as part of the Week of Action to Stop Tar Sands Profiteers, March 16-23.

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Youth Activists Blockade TransCanada’s Offices

On Monday, March 11, over 100 people representing a coalition of students, members of the Massachusetts Methodist clergy, mothers fighting for their children, and concerned community members marched into the Westborough, MA office of TransCanada Corporation and held a funeral mourning the loss of our future at the hands of the Keystone XL Pipeline. The pipeline will transport the tar sands that climate scientists say will lock us into irreversible global warming.
Of those 100 protesters, 25 of them locked themselves together with handcuffs and were arrested in an act of civil disobedience. Carrying a coffin emblazoned with the words “Our Future,” they held flowers and sang an elegy as we marched in procession.

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Protestor Locks Himself to Conference Equipment, Disrupts TransCanada Presentation At Oil Industry Gathering

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ethan_loud

Ethan speaking to room full of fossil fuel profiteers

Houston, TX — February 28th, 2013, 1:45pm — a protestor with Tar Sands Blockade this afternoon locked his neck to a projector screen in the middle of a TransCanada presentation at the North American Crude Marketing Conference in Houston. In taking direct action, Ethan Nuss confronted in-person Paul Miller, TransCanada’s Executive Vice President of Oil Pipelines, and a ballroom of tar sands industry investors, demanding a halt to the toxic Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

Nuss successfully disrupted the second annual conference hosted by Platts. Among other things, the gathering is intended for fossil fuel industry executives and their financial backers to collaborate on schemes to transport dirty and dangerous tar sands from Canada to the Gulf Coast so it can be refined and sold on the international market, thereby expanding the industry.

“TransCanada’s ‘business as usual’ spells death and destruction for our communities,” said Ethan Nuss. “My conscience won’t allow me to watch this multinational corporation and their profiteers poison impacted communities from here in Houston’s polluted East End to indigenous people at the point of tar sands extraction in Alberta, Canada. This must stop.” Ethan further shares his reasons for taking direct action below:

At last year’s marketing conference, Paul Miller explained the necessity of the southern leg of Keystone XL through Oklahoma and Texas to the expansion of the exploitative tar sands industry. TransCanada’s own fourth quarter report, released last week, revealed that the controversial pipeline is less than half completed, despite the Canadian pipeline corporation’s previous projections for completion of the southern segment this April.

This revelation highlights that Tar Sands Blockade’s sustained civil disobedience campaign since last August has been successful in delaying Keystone XL construction. Today’s action is part of growing momentum for an upcoming national week of action called for by Tar Sands Blockade and allies from March 16-23, with over 60 actions currently reported nationwide.

“This is just a morsel of what TransCanada and other tar sands profiteers can expect in the coming weeks and months,” said Kim Huynh, a spokesperson with Tar Sands Blockade. “All over the country, communities are gearing up to take to the streets, offices, extraction sites and public events to show that our movement won’t relent until we’ve made this investment as toxic for TransCanada and its financial backers as the very tar sands being piped through Keystone XL. Our tar sands-free future begins now.”

Earlier this week, 20,000 gallons of crude oil leaked into Otter Creek in Tyler County, TX from a pipeline owned by Sunoco Logistics. Otter Creek flows into Russell Creek, which feeds the Neches River. The leak did not trigger Sunoco’s detection systems but was discovered by local residents reporting oil in their water.

February Update: Spreading like Wildfire, Climate Action in 2013

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TSB OKClimate Direct Action is Taking Off!

Check out the growing resistance to fossil fuels extraction and combustion:

Youth Minister Ascends Equipment at TransCanada Construction Site in Oklahoma

Stefan Warner, a youth pastor who was born and raised in OK, locked himself to machinery being used to build the toxic Keystone XL tar sands pipeline near Schoolton, OK. Warner is acting with Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance, a coalition of Oklahomans and allies fighting to prevent construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline which will bring dangerous and toxic diluted bitumen from the biome-consuming Tar Sands giga project to refinery communities in the Gulf. In addition to Warner, seven others were arrested.

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Rising Tide Vancouver, Coast Salish Territories Action Against Enbridge Pipeline

Last month Rising Tide Vancouver, Coast Salish Territories took action with fifty other groups against the Tar Sands pipeline proposed by Enbridge. A noise demo was held that showed Enbridge, the Joint Review Panel, and any other entity that wants to put in pipelines without consent, that communities will not stay silent. Over 1,000 people participated and the noise was clearly held inside the hearing. Six people were arrested after making their way inside the building. The action was in solidarity with those on the frontlines to say that communities have the right to say NO.

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Idle No More World Day of Action and Tar Sands Blockade

The Tar Sands Blockade, Rising Tide Alaska and many other groups joined the Idle No More World Day of Action. In Texas, Blockaders joined with indigenous people representing Idle No More and the American Indian Genocide Museum for a rally at the Canadian Consulate in downtown Houston. People flew signs and banners, sang songs, and played drums before trying to deliver a letter of their demands to the consulate. Actions as part of the Tar Sands Blockade also continued with a lockdown at an oil and gas conference and a die-in at the Houston TransCanada offices.

The Tar Sands Blockade have also called for a week of action to stop Tar Sands profiteers from March 16-23. There will also be a action camp for Tar Sands resistance organized by the Great Plains Coalition in Oklahoma.

Read more about Idle No More.

Read the solidarity statement signed by organizations including Rising Tide North America with Idle No More.

Shadbush Environmental Justice Collective Lock Down for Food and Farms, Not Fracking!

January 27th, residents of Western Pennsylvania and friends of Lawrence County farmer Maggie Henry locked themselves to a giant paper-mache pig in the entrance to a Shell natural gas well site in order to protest the company’s threat to local agriculture and food safety. The newly-constructed gas well is located less than 4,000 feet from Henry’s organic pig farm. Prior to this action, Maggie exhausted all avenues to prevent or shut down the well through the legal system. Supporters of her farm have also held previous protests at the site. Despite the heightened risks posed by the abandoned wells in the area, Shell is moving forward with their operations, and Maggie’s supporters have turned to civil disobedience.

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Deconstruction of the Crawford Coal Plant in Chicago Begins

The deconstruction of the Crawford coal plant in the Little Village neighborhood of Chicago began in January. The closure of these power plants last year was a campaign that Rising Tide Chicago and many other community organizations have worked on over the years. This and the other coal fired power plant were the last in any major US city. The work of Rising Tide helps make sure this will be a scene that repeats itself with greater and greater frequency!

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Action against Chevron in Solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en Nation

On January 5th many action were held in solidarity with a call by the Wet’suwet’en Nation to take action against Chevron for their move, revealed on Christmas Eve, to purchase a full 50% share of the Pacific Trails natural gas pipeline, effectively taking over the project. The actions continued resistance to the pipeline including when on November 20, 2012, the Wet’suwet’en located several petroleum surveyors within their territory, and ordered them to leave. The surveyors were trespassing on indigenous lands, and they were given only one warning of eviction. These men worked for Can-Am Geomatics, a mapping and engineering firm hired by the Apache Corporation, the lead company in Kitimat LNG (liquified natural gas), the consortium heading the Pacific Trails Pipeline project (PTP). The PTP is a plan to construct pipelines to pump hydraulically fracked natural gas and tar sands crude oil from Alberta through We’suwet’en territory to British Columbia’s pacific coast for export.

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Support the Indiegogo for the Unist’ot’en Action Camp

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Lifelong Oklahoman Youth Pastor suspended from KXL Construction Equipment, locked to machinery.

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TSB OKBREAKING: Lifelong Oklahoman Youth Pastor suspended from KXL Construction Equipment, locked to machinery.

Earlier this morning, Stefan Warner, a youth pastor who was born and
raised in Harrah, OK, locked himself to machinery being used to build the
toxic Keystone XL tar sands pipeline through Creek land by treaty near
Schoolton, OK. Warner is taking action to protect the North Canadian River
and
the health of the towns and land it runs through from being irreversibly
damaged by diluted bitumen (tar sands) leaks and spills, as well as to
send a clear message that the current day colonialism and disregard for
the health and sovereignty of indigenous peoples in Alberta and along
the pipeline is unacceptable—from a Christian perspective, as well as a
human perspective.

Tar sands pipelines have a horrendous track record: the existing
Keystone 1 pipeline leaked twelve times in its first year, and at least
thirty times to date. In 2010, the added dangers of tar sands pipelines
were demonstrated by Enbridge’s Line 6B pipeline spill of over a million
gallons of diluted bitumen into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan. The
Kalamazoo Tar Sands spill is the costliest inland spill in United States
history, draining the oil spill coffers and placing the $800 million and
rising price tag onto the backs of local and federal taxpayers. But it
is not the monetary burden that weighs heaviest; the toll on human life,
health and local ecosystems is immeasurable, and in the immediate, the
toxicity of the diluted bitumen and undisclosed proprietary chemicals
has proven devastating.

In addition to the immense dangers posed by the Keystone XL, TransCanada
has been misrepresenting the economic effects of the pipeline. The
majority of construction jobs are temporary and have been filled by
Wisconsin-based contractor Michel’s, not Oklahomans and Texans. Despite
TransCanada and the State Department’s rhetoric of energy independence,
the diluted bitumen transported by the Keystone XL is destined for
export to foreign markets after being refined in Gulf Coast refineries,
and the National Resources Defense Council asserts that the KXL will
increase domestic gas prices.

“I grew up in a town where the North Canadian River runs right through,
and we can’t let the North Canadian become another Kalamazoo ,” said
Oklahoman youth pastor Stefan Warner. “I figure folks have to take action to
stop our beautiful Oklahoma from being marred by a foreign corporation,
and stand up to fight big corporations who think that poisoning people
and stealing land is acceptable so long as they make a profit.”

Warner is acting with Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance, a coalition of
Oklahomans and allies fighting to prevent construction of the Keystone
XL which will bring dangerous and toxic diluted bitumen from the
biome-consuming Tar Sands gigaproject to refinery communities in the
Gulf. This action comes in the wake of dozens of similar actions which
have actively fought construction of the Keystone XL in Oklahoma and
Texas. In light of reports of shoddy welding by TransCanada
whistleblower Evan Vokes and the recent release of photographs depicting
holes in the weld of a pipe buried in Texas, the struggle to keep the
Keystone XL from being completed is even more urgent.